How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (30 page)

“These are my friends,” Ziba answers, “Doug and Edward.”

“This is our room,” Doug says, taking a step forward.

Jordan stands, his buzz cut seeming to graze the ceiling, and grabs Ziba with one of his big, meaty hands like a bear swatting a salmon out of a stream. “Why don't you pussies get the fuck out of here before I kick the shit out of you?” he snarls, then reaches his paws around Ziba, pinning her arms against her sides. “C'mon, baby, gimme a kiss,” he gurgles. It's all very
Perils of Pauline.

Doug lunges forward, but I intervene to stop things from escalating into a fight. “Listen,” I say to Jordan's brick wall of a back, “a chaperone's going to be coming around to do bed check any minute, so why don't you just say good night and . . .”

Jordan whips around and backhands me across the face, just like that, sending me flying into a bureau. I've never been hit before, managing to have survived elementary school and junior high with only the psychological scars of verbal abuse, but I'm here to tell you that, at least in the short term, the physical kind hurts way more. I sink down onto the floor, the knobs of the bureau digging into my back as I do. Ziba reaches for me, but Jordan shoves her to the floor, then turns and actually head-butts Doug.

I thought they only did that in professional wrestling.

Doug lunges for Jordan, body-checking him in the gut. But the senator's son raises his knee and clocks Doug right in the chin. Doug winces and stumbles backward onto the floor, his mouth bleeding.

Pleased with himself, Jordan turns around and laughs as if to say, “That was fun, now what should we do?” then lets out a big, hearty “Hah!” as he pounces onto the bed. He grunts and is just about to leap on top of Ziba when we hear Natie call out from the bathroom.

“Break time!” he chirps. From around the corner Natie waddles in, a tray of plastic cups in his pudgy hands. “Who wants a cocktail?” he says, as if there were nothing unusual about the son of a senator smacking around three of his best friends.

“What's that?” Jordan grumbles, his rheumy eyes trying to focus.

“Grain alcohol,” Natie says. He speaks slow and loud, like he's talking to an elderly deaf relative. “Try it, it's good.”

Jordan bounces off the bed and swipes at a cup, making the others on the tray wiggle and spill a little. Behind him, Ziba slides slowly across the wall.

Jordan sucks down the lemonade in one long, revolting gulp, his Adam's apple bobbing. Ziba reaches for the first heavy object she can find on the desk, which is a table lamp. She motions to Doug, who's slumped on the floor, to pull the cord out of the socket.

Jordan exhales a satisfied “Ahhh,” grinning stupidly at his accomplishment. “I'm the chugging champ of my frat,” he says, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

Senator Craig must be so proud.

“Have another,” Natie says.

Ziba grips the lamp in one hand.

“These are good,” Jordan says. “You can't even taste the grain alcohol.”

Ziba tries to lift the lamp, but it doesn't budge. It's fucking bolted to the desk. Goddamn hotels. She looks around for something else.

Natie hands Jordan another lemonade. “Y'know,” Jordan says, trying to focus, “you're okay for a little fuck.”

“Thanks.”

“Watch this.” Jordan tilts his head back and chugs the next glass down whole, punctuated by a noisy “glug” at the end.

Then, as if the air had been let out of him, he crumples in a heap. “That one didn't go down so good,” he says, then belches, then belches again. By the third belch there's no question what's coming next. He starts spewing right there, before he can even make it to the bathroom door. We all back away from him, partly to clear a path, and partly because that's just what you do when somebody starts to hurl in front of you.

None of us moves while we listen to him puke his guts out in the bathroom. It's one of those horribly endless barfing sessions, the kind where the moment you think it's over, it starts up again. Finally we hear him moan, followed by a long silence.

“And the Swedish judge gives a 9.5 for that projectile vomit,” Natie whispers. The four of us tiptoe to the bathroom and peek in to see the senator's son lying on the floor like a beached walrus. A beached walrus lying in his own puke. We turn on the fan and shut the door.

“What the hell was in there?” I hiss.

“Rubbing alcohol,” Natie says. “I use it to clean my skin.”

“Natie! You might've killed him.”

“What was I supposed to do? Stand by and let him rape Ziba?”

None of us say anything, because we all know he's right. Ziba leans over and kisses him, not her usual European two-cheek thing, but a soft, gentle peck on the lips. “Thank you,” she whispers.

Natie's face turns the color of his hair.

There's a knock at the door. “Bed check!” a voice yells.

Now adrenaline is a funny thing. You'd be amazed how quickly you can get vomit out of a rug if you're motivated. I spray the air with Right Guard and open the door.

“Hey, guys!”

It's Chuck Mailer, the band teacher who plays piano for the chorus. We call him Chuckles behind his back because he's always trying to be palsy-walsy with the students when in fact he's a total cheesehead. The band kids love him.

He winks at Ziba. “Now listen here, young lady, just because you sing tenor doesn't mean you get to stay in the boys' room. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.” Chuckles says everything like it's a punch line, whether it's funny or not. Usually, it's not.

Ziba slips past him. “I was just leaving,” she says.

Chuckles gives her a quick little shoulder rub the way male teachers sometimes do to female students. “Now you go straight home,” he says, “ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”

“Good one, Mr. Mailer,” Ziba monotones. “Good night, boys.” She blows us a kiss and slides out the door.

Chuckles claps his hands together. “Okay,” he says, “everything A-Number-One-Super-Duper here?”

“Just duper,” I say.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Say, what's that smell?”

You wouldn't mean the vomit of a U.S. senator's son, would you?

“What smell?” says Natie.

Chuckles sniffs again. “It's kind of like . . . air freshener.”

Thank you, Lord.

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” I say. “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” says Chuckles.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” say Natie and Doug.

“It's nice to see you boys so calm and quiet,” Chuckles says. “Some of the baritones are getting pretty wild tonight. I shouldn't tell you this, but there was a water-balloon fight that got a little out of hand.”

“Really?” I say, looking suitably shocked. “We don't have the energy for that kind of thing.” I make a big show of stifling a yawn.

“Well, then, I'll let you boys get to sleep. Say, mind if I use your bathroom?”

“No!” we all scream.

Chuckles flinches. “Why not?”

“It's broken,” I say.

“It stinks,” says Doug at the same time.

Chuckles looks bewildered.

“Edward took this totally toxic dump,” Natie says, “and it . . . uh . . . broke the toilet. That's why we sprayed the air freshener.”

“Really?” Chuckles says. He puts a hand on my shoulder to show his tender concern. “You all right there, Eddie boy?”

I don't appreciate having been cast in the role of the smelly dumper but, trouper that I am, I go with it. “Onion rings,” I say, rubbing my belly. “I like them, but they don't like me.”

As soon as Chuckles is gone
we open the bathroom door to check on Jordan, who is dead to the world though not, mercifully, actually dead.

“Do you think we should clean him up?” I ask.

“Let him sleep in his own puke,” Doug says, rubbing his jaw. “Serves the fucker right.”

“The whole room's going to reek by morning,” says Natie. “We better hose him down.”

We wet some towels in the tub and mop up the mess while Jordan lies there, completely unaware of all the activity around him. “We should do something to him,” Doug says as he lifts up Jordan's shoulders so I can pull off his puke-covered Izod. “Once, when Boonbrain passed out, some of the guys from the team put him in a rowboat in the middle of Echo Lake without the oars. Man, it was comical.” Doug looks down at his own shirt, which now has the senator's son's vomit on it. “Aw, gross,” he says, tearing it off and throwing it in the tub.

Natie walks out of the bathroom.

“Where the hell are you going, Nudelman?” Doug says. “We could use some help here.” Jordan's khakis are also packed with puke.

“We're going to have to take his pants off, too,” I say.

“Lucky you,” Doug whispers.

“Bite me.”

“You wish.”

He's right.

I undo Jordan's pants and then we each take a leg to pull them off. Even his boxers are soaked.

“He's all yours,” Doug says, patting Jordan's thigh like he was a used car.

I bend down and shimmy them off, taking note of Jordan's nasty-looking prick, which is all wrinkly and uncut, like a wonton. I've just pulled off his shorts when I'm blinded by a flash of light.

“What the hell are you doing?” I say, blinking to get my vision back.

“Paying for your sophomore year,” Natie says.

“What are you talking about?”

He wiggles the camera in his little hand. “Two words,” he says. “Black mail.”

“You cheesehead,” Doug says. “You can't blackmail a guy like this with a picture of him passed out naked. He probably passes out naked all the time.”

“I know that,” Natie says, “but we
can
blackmail him with pictures of him naked and having sex with another guy.”

Doug and I both frown.

“Well, don't look at me,” Doug says. “Edward's the bisexual one.”

“Doug!”

“Oops. Sorry.”

“He's just joking,” I say.

Natie gives me a who-do-you-think-you're-kidding look. “I suppose you were just helping him tie his shoes up there on the roof.”

Shit.

“This is fucked up, man,” Doug says.

“Calm down,” Natie says. “I helped steal ten grand and I didn't say anything about that now, did I?”

He's got a point.

“So why don't you just get over yourself and drop your goddamn pants.”

“Me?” Doug shouts. “Why me?”

“Because yours'll photograph better.”

Again he's got a point.

“Man, I don't know . . .”

Natie throws his hands in the air. “Jeez Louise, am I the only one around here who cares how Edward's going to pay for college?”

“Of course not,” Doug says.

“So then shut up already and get naked.”

Doug exhales, then undoes the button on his jeans. I make a mental note to try this approach myself next time. The phone rings. I reluctantly go into the bedroom to get it.

“Hello?”

“Edward, darling . . .”

Either Lauren Bacall knows what room I'm in or it's Ziba.

“I'm so sorry I couldn't help you boys. Is it dreadful over there?”

“Nah, we've got everything under control.” I see Doug's underwear fling into the hallway.

“I can't believe Jordan was such a beast,” Ziba says. “He used to be such a gentleman.”

“Okay,” Larry Flynt Jr. says from the bathroom, “now straddle his shoulder so it looks like he's about to give you a blow job. Great, say
cheesehead.”

“It's that wretched fraternity,” Ziba says. “I should have known.”

“Just take the damn picture, will ya'?” Doug says.

“Is everything all right there?” Ziba asks. “I hear yelling.”

“Back up,” Natie says. “Your cock is blocking his face.”

“We're watching scrambled porn,” I say.

“You boys only think of one thing.”